The following is a transcription of the podcast, "A Parent's Perspective -- The Social and Emotional World of Children with LD."
In this podcast about the social and emotional world of children with learning disabilities (LD), Candace Cortiella (on behalf of the National Center for Learning Disabilities) talks with Judith Halden, a videographer and mother of young adult with learning disabilities.
Candace Cortiella: Welcome, Judith. Many people think learning disabilities are only about reading, writing, spelling, and skills needed for academic success. What would you say about the social side of having a learning disability?
Judith Halden: As hard as it is to watch your child flounder in terms of grades and academic performance, it is ten times harder to watch them struggled to fit in with their classmates. Social isolation and rejection are as painful as academics struggles, if not more so. Feeling good about yourself, especially during the school years, comes from being good at learning, since most of your day is spent in an academic environment. And kids with LD just don’t do well without extra help and specialized attention.
Many of the everyday aspects of school impose extra social and emotional impact for students with LD. For example, if they are asked to read aloud in class, even if they know the subject matter, they often trip over words or misread them or mispronounce them. A student with LD often gets tests and written work back from the teacher and the page is filled with red marks and corrections, while the child sitting next to her may not have that kind of experience, certainly not as often. When students with LD need extra time to finish tests and other assignments in class, or they need to stay after class to get their work done, they have to miss other activities.
Many children with LD process things more slowly and can’t always keep up with the social demands of a conversation. Just being able to answer in a timely manner and to understand what’s going on can be difficult. Sometimes children with LD don’t get the jokes that everybody else does. So, kids with LD sometimes grow up with the sense they just don’t fit in, and watching this as a parent is extremely painful.
Candace Cortiella: Yes. And some children with LD are not as good at sports or seem to be socially awkward, sometimes behaving like they are younger than their chronological age. What can parents do to help?
Judith Halden: The best thing parents can do is give their children lots of encouragement and practice doing different things. This tends to work better with children who are younger than 10 or 12 years old, because as they get in to the teen years, this is generally not something [they’re receptive to]. Try to find activities that your child can do well and allow them to share that with others. This will give them a sense of accomplishment and is a good way of having kids interact. Until your child is ready for the intensity of competition or even skilled enough to participate in a particular sport, try to keep their social time as noncompetitive as you can. I used to look for other children who were accepting and weren’t going to be judgmental of my daughter’s weaknesses. I worked with the other parents to keep the kids connected. When kids do things with each other without a parent involved, they hone the skills they need to build on this. Sometimes there are setbacks but it’s very important that parents be the cheerleader and be excited about the successes.
Candace Cortiella: And there are certainly a lot of activities these days for children who aren’t competitive. So, I think that’s a particularly important recommendation -- that we look for things that don’t include the stress that competition brings to the activities.
Judith Halden: Right.
Candace Cortiella: What about role playing? Does that help children with LD learn social skills?
Judith Halden: It does. If you think about it in terms of how you live your own life, you don’t necessarily want to tell a joke with a risqué punch line for the first time at a board meeting. But you might try it out somewhere else first. Children also benefit when they practice doing things that are going to draw attention to them, particularly if there is potential for embarrassment. Role playing with parents and siblings can be very instructive and can actually be fun. Having your child take the lead in social situations when you are around can also be helpful. For example, you might let your child ask for directions, or request help finding something in the supermarket. If you’re there to oversee and critique afterwards -- to help [your child] figure out what worked or didn’t work -- those experiences can be extremely helpful.
Candace Cortiella: And I think there are a lot of good books that can teach some of these skills as well.
Judith Halden: Yes.
Candace Cortiella: I remember a book I had when my daughter was young — I think it was the Berenstain Bears — and it was about figures of speech, which are terms that don’t necessarily make a lot of sense. But you’re going to encounter them in social discourse all the time so you need to know the meaning of them. There are a lot of those kinds of things out there that can be very useful. Do you think therapy for children with learning disabilities can help them feel better about themselves and prevent them from feeling isolated and different?
Judith Halden: Well, a positive self-image is something that develops slowly over time, and there is no sure path to feeling good about yourself. But it’s the successes that build on themselves that get you to the place where you feel good about yourself. Particularly for children with LD that journey is often much more difficult because there is the almost natural desire to measure up to their peers, and good feelings are often linked with doing well in school because, as I mentioned before, school takes up the bulk of a child’s day. Therapy can be helpful, especially to help them articulate what they’re feeling (if that is something they are able to do). Social skills groups, which are sometimes hard to find, are often run by therapists and can be very helpful because they provide a peer group of children who also struggle and the group model can be very helpful for children.
Candace Cortiella: What other kind of therapies do you think might be helpful, such as speech, language therapy, etc.?
Judith Halden: I think it’s helpful if the child has a speech and language issue. A good speech and language therapist] is wonderful, and many of them now work on pragmatics, in expressing words that have double meanings. The pragmatics of language can be very helpful to a child, but I think being in a social skills group, or a group that includes other children who are not the captains of the teams or the most athletic, I think that helps children who feel isolated and who look at themselves and feel that they don’t measure up. [A social skills group] gives them a sense of commonality and I think that’s very important for children.
Candace Cortiella: And how would a parent go about findings a group like that? Do you have any recommendations?
Judith Halden: You can check with your public school to see what they have to offer. I think is depends partly on how large a school district you have and how sophisticated they are in terms of what they are able to offer. I found that where I live outside New York City there are number of very good schools specifically for children with learning disabilities. And I found contacting them to be very helpful as they have many, many different professionals whom they consult with, and they were very willing to help share the names of them. Networking is extremely important.
Candace Cortiella: Parents might also try organizations like the Learning Disabilities Association or Parent Training and Information Center, who might have information about who is running social skills groups or how to go about finding them.
Judith Halden: Absolutely.
Candace Cortiella: And I like your recommendation about contacting private schools that serve students with learning disabilities because, even if your student isn’t enrolled there you might be might able to take advantage of some of their other programs.
Judith Halden: Right. And, again, they have access to other professionals in the field — psychologists, social workers, speech and language therapists, physical therapists, and occupational therapists. They are wonderful people to network with and to ask questions of.
Candace Cortiella: I know that you agree that [addressing] these dimensions of children with learning disabilities is critically important and certainly as important as addressing their academic challenges if not more important, to get them to become healthy and successful adults with good self-images.
This transcription was made possible by a grant from the American Legion Child Welfare Foundation.
